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21. desember 2006
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Very troubling espionage case in the British military.
Cpl Daniel James, 44, is charged under the 1911 Official Secrets Act with "prejudicing the safety of the state" by passing information "calculated to be directly or indirectly useful to the enemy".
It was said he had communicated with a "foreign power" in the incident on Nov 2, believed to be Iran.
Most of the hearing at Westminster magistrates' court yesterday was held in secret and no mention was made of James's job or his address.
But The Daily Telegraph has learned that he acts as an interpreter for Gen David Richards, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan and one of the most senior officers in the Army.
Daniel James is of Iranian descent. Interpreters who can speak languages like Arabic and Farsi are in very short supply in the British armed forces.
In his position, he undoubtedly had access to very sensitive information.
10:54:02 PM 
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Local Muslim leaders in Washington DC, appalled by the Holocaust denial propagated by Iran's president and all too prevalent in the Muslim world, participate in a unique ceremony of solidarity with Jews at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
American Muslims "believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again," said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.
Around the hexagonal room, candles glimmered under the engraved names of the death camps: Chelmno. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Majdanek.
"We stand here with three survivors of the Holocaust and my great Muslim friends to condemn this outrage in Iran," said Sara J. Bloomfield, the museum's director, addressing a bank of TV cameras in the room, known as the Hall of Remembrance.
The museum, she noted, holds "millions of pieces of evidence of this crime."
As I noted previously, during World War II, Iran saved Jewish children from the Nazis. On a local level, there were many such stories.
One of them, Johanna Neumann, recounted at the ceremony how Muslims saved her Jewish family. Members of her family had fled from Germany to Albania, where Muslim families sheltered them and hid their identity during the Nazi occupation.
"Everybody knew who we were. Nobody would even have thought of denouncing us" to the Nazis, said the tiny 76-year-old Silver Spring resident. "These people deserve every respect anybody can give them."
The idea for the ceremony originated with Magid, whose Sterling mosque has been active in interfaith efforts. After hearing radio reports about the Iranian meeting, "I said to myself, 'We have to, as Muslim leaders . . . show solidarity with our fellow Jewish Americans,' " Magid recalled after the speeches.
As Ayaan Hirsi Ali points out in her article Confronting Holocaust denial, both ignorance and denial of the Holocaust are endemic in the Muslim world of today.
Great kudos to these American Muslims for confronting this attitude.
8:11:05 PM
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Syed Saleem Shahzad predicts that the pivotal battle of Afghanistan will commence in the spring of 2007, after the harsh winter has closed down most opportunities for travel in the mountain regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
He details a very interesting visit to Taliban stronghold Baghran, where his group of reporters are caught up in a bit of instructive infighting between the local traditional elders and the young Taliban commander. It is well worth reading in its entirety.
Here is an interesting fact that may well prove important in defeating the Taliban, even as they pose a formidable threat after effectively conquering North Waziristan from Pakistan:
Other respected former commanders live in this small Taliban "fiefdom", but they have hardly any say now that the Taliban have taken power. This is one of the major problems with the Taliban movement - it does not readily embrace the old guard of the resistance, despite all their cooperation, and instead prefers to stick with young lads no matter how incompetent they might be.
One such is Agha, who has never been a commander and is only in his early 20s. Two years ago, on his way from Peshawar, Pakistan, to southwestern Afghanistan, he was arrested in Kandahar. After just two and a half hours of interrogation he revealed the details of a Taliban hideout. The Afghan National Army conducted successful raids and arrested dozens of Taliban.
Despite this, on the strength of his madrassa (seminary) education, the youth was given the job of administrator of a Taliban-controlled district.
Ideological purity goes before competence. Hopefully this may aid the western-backed Karzai in repelling the coming onslaught of the Taliban and its allies next year.
Much also rests on the willingness of other countries than the US and Britain to actually be willing to pursue the war in Afghanistan.
PS: I don't put any stock whatsoever in the claim made in a recent French documentary that French snipers twice had Bin Laden in their sights in 2003, but he got away because American commanders did not give the order to fire in time. Even aside from the claim being made only though anonymous sources, and the French military denying it, the story sounds extremely implausible at all levels.
5:44:34 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.01.2007; 08:22:32.
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